Recruiting the Octopus
by general zero
Summary: "Everything is going smoothly. Rhino is a gun. Point it, and it shoots. All he needs is the proper motivation. What about the next project?" "Get me a genius, and then give him some claws. But make sure that he, too, is properly motivated." "Yes, Mr. Osborn."


**Welcome. Enjoy and please review.**

**Rating:K for everybody.**

**This is a one-shot, barring overwhelming clamor for continuation. Anyone interested in adopting it can talk to me.**

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><p>Fiers didn't bother coming into the room. He just stood in the doorway, implacably watching Harry watch himself in the mirror. Despite his usefulness, Harry suspected that Fiers was not completely his man. There were too many secrets around him; they hung in the air like invisible vultures. Of course, it was nothing compared to the secrets that had choked the air back at Oscorp, or the ones here in Ravencroft, so thick they could be stirred like a pot of thick soup—and Harry had certainly stirred them up.<p>

It had taken some time and effort, but Harry had all the time in the world when he wasn't paralyzed with pain. Eventually, some interesting things floated to the top of the soup. Horrific things, true; dangerous things, true—but Harry himself was both horrific and dangerous now, too.

"How is it?" asked Fiers. He asked every time, not through any sympathy, Harry knew, but out of purely intellectual self-interest. Fiers was only useful so long as he thought Harry was useful. There was no trust in their partnership, which was what Harry preferred anyway.

Harry felt his neck and shoulders tense at the question, despite his calm exterior. It had been bad today.

"It is," Harry said simply. He needed to focus on his plan, not the pain. "How is Systevich adjusting to his freedom?"

Fiers inspected his fingernails lazily. "He took to the armor with extreme enthusiasm. He takes his orders with less enthusiasm, save the ones involving Spiderman, obviously. It is not a problem. Rhino is a gun. Point it, and it shoots. All he needs is the proper motivation."

"Good. Are we ready for another project?"

"I think so. Which one?"

Harry considered. Rhino was truly a gun; he had to be aimed or he was useless. Harry's plan needed someone capable of a little more autonomy—but not too much.

"Get me a genius," he said, "and then give him some claws. But make sure that he, too, is properly motivated."

Fiers smirked. "Yes, Mr. Osborn."

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><p>Fiers watched from the other side of a one-way window in the bowels of the Ravencroft Institute as two employees bustled around the man in the chair. Thugs in lab coats, paid for their ability to keep their mouths shut rather than any ability to correctly draw blood.<p>

The man in the chair wearily suggested that if they wanted to kill him they ought to use something bigger than needles, apparently referring to the thugs' numerous inexpert jabs at his veins. He received no answer and sighed wearily. Everything about the man in the chair seemed weary. Even his sarcasm was not some brand of defiance but merely an occupation with which to fill time that had nothing else to fill it. Fiers allowed himself a flare of satisfaction at the observation; he had picked the perfect man, one who had simultaneously nothing to lose and everything. Prisoner B122.

"You could just let me do that. I couldn't possibly be any worse, and I know I'd be faster," suggested the prisoner. "It's not like I could run away." He was correct about that, Fiers noted. The man's gray pallor, unnatural on someone who looked so young, pointed to the obvious—B122 was slowly dying from incremental blood loss. Fiers frowned. He may have to move up the time table if the prisoner was to be of any use.

The Ravencroft cronies did not reply to the man's interjections, nor did he seem to expect them to. One of them succeeded in striking a vein and brusquely filled several vials with blood—four, five, six, seven total.

Fiers was pleased; these were the perfect guards, as well. They might have been killing the man, but they were very good at being silent—so good, in fact, that Fiers had been able to bribe them into leaving the prisoner alone in the room for ten minutes after they left with the vials of his precious blood. He was going to make good use of that ten minutes.

Prisoner B122 had his head down when Fiers entered. Perhaps he was dizzy or faint. He didn't bother to look up as the door clicked open and shut, merely threw out another tired provocation. "Back for more? I suppose you dropped one in the hall just to spite me."

Knowing that the man expected silence, Fiers answered with a hello. The prisoner's head shot up immediately. He took one look at Fiers and glowered with suspicion.

"Who are you?"

Fiers slid a wheeled stool from the corner and sat down in front of the prisoner. "A friend."

The prisoner arched an eyebrow, as if affronted; his voice dripped with sarcasm, this time the kind with a little life in it. "You must be a ghost, then. Apparently, I've gone so mad that not only am I seeing dead people, but I am also unable to recognize an old friend."

"I can't testify to your sanity," said Fiers, "but I can assure you that I am very much alive."

Prisoner B122 considered at him calmly. He appeared completely unintrigued by Fiers's presence—almost bored. "It's not going to work."

Ah, here came the assumptions. "What's not going to work?" asked Fiers, playing along.

The eyebrow shot up again, this time in an expression that left little doubt of the man's opinion of Fiers's intelligence. "You're from Russia, or China—hell, maybe even Syria—and you're here to break me out so that you can bring me to a facility just like this one and your people can prick and suck and snip with the same extraordinary incompetence that these Ravencroft bastards have demonstrated—and the NSA demonstrated before that, and the FBI, and the UN, and WHO… In twenty years, no one has ever been able to make anything useful out of me but a pin cushion."

"Well, I'm not here for your body. I'm interested in your mind."—Fiers noted the man's surprise with satisfaction—"I have a proposition."

"Obviously, or you wouldn't be here." It was impressive how quickly the prisoner regained both his equilibrium and his suspicion. "My mind contains nothing but old frustrations and nuclear science that is years out of date. What could you possibly want with me?"

"Don't be so modest. Everyone knows you are a genius. You were a famous man before you ever went near the Aguacito facility." Fiers watched carefully, knowing it was a risk to bring up the reason that prisoner B122 was even in Ravencroft: Aguacito, the nuclear research center whose explosion this man had both miraculously survived and deliberately caused. Surprisingly, the name elicited no reaction at all from the former scientist.

"You didn't answer the question."

Fiers pretended to be slightly abashed that his distraction had fallen through. "Alright. This is the way it is: I, in conjunction with a few others, have secured several highly-advanced custom weapons. We have plans for them, but they need… pilots, so to speak."

"I'm not a soldier."

"We're not a looking for a soldier. We need someone who can take initiative within general orders, not someone we have to direct in every matter."

"That hardly means you need a genius."

"There is also the matter of endurance. The weapon we have in mind is rather… taxing to wield."

The man grinned sourly. The radioactive explosion had not killed him like it had every other person in Aguacito, but it had had its side effects. "So you are after my body."

"It makes you a prime candidate, yes." Feirs thought the man was intrigued, now, whether he showed it or not. He wouldn't ask so many questions if he truly weren't interested. This was almost too easy. Prisoner B122, genius though he was, had asked only the most predictable questions and jumped to the exact conclusions Fiers had expected. Just now, for example, the man would either ask more about the weapon, or he would want to know about the people who would be directing him.

"You're not with government, are you?" asked the prisoner, right on cue. He didn't wait for an answer, though. "You're working for Osborn. Norman or his kid, either one."

Fiers was so unprepared for such a deduction that he actually showed the surprise on his face. He furiously reigned it in, reproaching himself for foolishly underestimating the scientist. It would not happen again. How to respond, though? He decided he had better steer the conversation away from the elder Osborn. However the scientist had deduced association between them, he didn't want it casually mentioned in front of Harry at some later date.

"Norman Osborn is dead."

The prisoner snorted. "Norman Osborn has been dying for the last thirty years; he will never actually finish the job, whatever evidence to the contrary there is. It is irrelevant, though. I suppose you're working for his son. Harvey, is it? A chip off the old block, I hear."

"Harry," Fiers corrected, glad to have successfully buried the delicate subject of the elder Osborn.

"Well, tell Harry he can test the damn thing on himself. I'm not interested."

Fiers relaxed; the argument was back into his territory, right back on schedule. "Don't refuse so quickly. Look around you: this is hardly the way the government should treat a hero, don't you think? Trapping you here and treating you like a lab experiment, after you stopped the Russians from getting into Aguacito?"

"By blowing it up and killing several hundred people," returned the prisoner. "Not exactly the most heroic of acts. They didn't give me a congressional medal of honor, but they didn't kill me, either—which was a relief, considering how surprised I was to still be alive, anyway. If you want a legal or and ethical commentary on it, go look in the Library of Congress. I don't care. I have no desire for any 'revenge' you may be offering. There's nothing to revenge."

That was a lie, Fiers noted with concealed glee. The scientist had said it casually enough, but his hands had gripped the arms of his chair tightly at key moments—Prisoner B122 certainly did resent his treatment.

"So you're perfectly willing to stay here? Forever?"

"Yes."

"Why? Are they paying you? Perhaps we could come to an agreement…" Fiers asked, slowly setting up his ace in the hole. He knew for a fact that Ravencroft was paying the man—after a fashion. It was simply a matter of offering more.

The prisoner's voice grew sharper. "I don't think it's any of your business. Just go back to Osborn and tell him to screw off."

"Think about what you're giving up," Fiers's voice dripped with faux earnestness. "About what we're offering you."

"I don't care if you're offering me the world."

Fiers actually smiled. He could not help it; things had gone perfectly. He slipped a hand into his coat and pulled out his phone. A few touches brought a picture of a young woman to the screen. He held it out for the man to look at and watched the little color remaining to him drain out of his face.

Fiers continued: "Dr. Octavius, we're offering you something much more precious than the world."

All emotion disappeared from the scientist's face, as if something inside him had shut down. Fiers knew he had won.

Octavius spoke, voice weary again: "What do you want me to do?"

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><p><strong>There you go: the recruitment of the next member of the Sinister Six. Doc Ock! I am shamelessly in love with this super-villain, and when I saw the teaser of his tentacles in Amazing Spiderman 2, I nearly had an aneurysm. Can't wait to see the Sinister Six.<strong>

**Please review! At least for Ock's sake, if not mine...**


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